Any IT project must include software testing as a crucial component. The program will be of higher quality if it is tested more frequently. How do you accomplish it now? You can choose either manual testing or automation testing.
Sticking with manual testing, however, might occasionally get you into difficulties because using human testers to achieve Continuous Testing can be quite time-consuming. Additionally, manual testing can significantly impact customer experience, is time-consuming, expensive, and subject to human error.
Businesses face ongoing pressure to enhance, adapt, and increase their competitiveness. Firms must automate repetitive testing activities to ensure that software functions as expected and quickly delivers value. Automation testing can be conducted in a cloud-based environment as it offers scalability and reliability. Keeping up with all the changes in the technology sector is a huge challenge. Adopting agile approaches can help you achieve faster Time to Market (TTM) and shorter development cycles.
This automation testing guide will cover all aspects of automation testing on the Cloud, including its requirements and various methodologies.
What is Automation Testing?
Automation testing is the practice of doing test tasks with the use of tools, scripts, and software by repeatedly carrying out pre-defined operations. It is a sort of testing that concentrates on swapping out repetitive, error-prone, and time-consuming manual operations or activities with automated scripts in order to improve the software’s performance and efficiency.
Testing is a crucial step in any software development lifecycle. If you want to ensure a higher quality standard, you must ensure that your software is tested more thoroughly. Automation testing performed on cloud platforms like LambdaTest frees up testers’ time to concentrate on other high-quality tasks. Such tasks include carrying out exploratory tests and analysing test results, among other things, by handling laborious and repetitive tasks like regression tests. As a result, automation testing enables you to finish more tests more quickly.
Why Automate Tests?
After reviewing some of the key benefits of automation testing, let’s examine a practical use case to see why it is required.
You get a brand-new software feature to test. Since you began developing your test strategy, you have discovered roughly 50 test cases.
You started the tests in the first sprint and reported roughly ten problems. These flaws are regularly fixed during sprints, and with each build, a new version of the software is published for testing. How can you ensure that repairing one flaw won’t affect the previously operational parts?
You must either test the complete piece of software or perform regression testing following each problem fix to ensure that. More features to test or software faults to find may make manual testing more challenging. Automation testing may be helpful in this situation.
In this situation, all you have to do is automate the parts that you have previously examined and tested. Now, you can quickly validate the integrity of your program whenever a fresh build or bug fix is available by running the whole suite.
As a result, you may develop your software more quickly and with more scope and quality. A bug-free application is made possible by a successful test automation technique.
How Are Automation Tests Conducted?
It’s essential to master automation testing techniques from this tutorial on the subject. Following are the steps that must be followed to complete an automation testing procedure:
Tool Selection for Tests
Before starting any test automation, you must decide which tests you need to automate. Once the test definition is ready, you must choose the best collection of tools to assist you in running the tests. Various testing tools are available. Code and test scripts that use code serve as the foundation for industry-standard automated testing solutions.
Selenium WebDriver, the most well-liked code-based web automation framework for automation testing, enables you to test online applications using several browsers, including Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, and others. Numerous other languages are supported, including Java, Python, C#, etc. However, selecting the appropriate one is an essential stage in the automation process.
You can perform automation testing on AI-powered test orchestration and test execution platforms like LambdaTest. It allows the running of automation tests across 3000+ real device and OS combinations. LambdaTest also integrates with various automation testing tools like Playwright, Appium, and others. You can also leverage the Selenium automation test on its Grid infrastructure to run tests against different combinations.
To begin, the first step is to sign up for a LambdaTest account. After successfully creating your account, be sure to jot down your username and access key, which can be found in your LambdaTest Profile Section. The LambdaTest Dashboard is your hub for essential test information, logs, and real-time status updates on running tests. Additionally, it provides access to video recordings of your past testing sessions. For configuring browser capabilities tailored to your cross-browser testing needs, utilise the LambdaTest Capabilities Generator on the platform.
You can follow the below steps to perform automation testing in the LambdaTest Cloud environment:
Step 1: Access the LambdaTest platform by logging in. If you’re new to the platform, you can easily register for a free account.
Step 2: Navigate to the Automation section on the right sidebar and select your preferred framework.
Step 3: Follow the provided instructions to configure your settings.
Once your automation tests are initiated, visit the Automation > Builds section to gain comprehensive insights into your test results, including passed tests, build sessions, failed tests, timeouts, errors, and more.
Define The Automation Scope
The following step is to specify the scope of your test automation once you have chosen the ideal test instrument. When defining the automation’s scope, take into account the following:
● The difficulty of the test cases
● Technology readiness
● Cross-application capabilities that are common
● Test case reuse and scalability for cross-browser testing
Development, Design, and Planning
The following items are part of the planning, design, and development phase:
● Feature and design of the framework
● Case development for tests
● Preparation of a test suite, Smoke, Sanity, and Regression, for instance
● CI/CD pipelines can be plugged into a framework to enable continuous testing.
Test Execution
The scripts created during the design phase are currently being used in this phase. The test automation tool or the test management tool, which will then be called the test automation tool, might be used for execution. Your test scripts should begin running as soon as feasible. Shift Left Testing technique also points to this.
The Shift Left Testing approach proposes relocating the testing activities “Left” or rather “earlier” in the development cycle, in contrast to traditional models like the Waterfall Model, where testing enters the picture at the very end of the cycle. Involving testers sooner in the software development life cycle results in better results. More defects are discovered the earlier the testers are involved, which leads to a higher-quality final product.
Maintenance
Testing is done during this stage of automation testing to see if the newly introduced functionalities are functioning properly or not. With each subsequent release cycle, test suites are updated and maintained in an effort to increase the efficacy of automation scripts.
Even shift-right testing is frequently performed during this point. Testing in production, often known as shift-right testing, takes place after the program has been put into use in real-world settings. This is mostly done to guarantee the application’s proper operation, stability, and usefulness in the production environment.
Different Approaches to Automation Testing
While performing automation testing, it is equally crucial to understand the various methodologies; for this reason, I’ve created a separate section to this course on automation testing. Here are the three primary strategies you can take into account when conducting automation testing.
Code-Driven Testing
This style of testing is well-liked in agile software development. Here, the main emphasis is on running test cases to see if certain code sections operate as expected or not.
The goal behind code-driven testing is to write the unit test using a programming language as opposed to an external tool that offers a testing framework. The benefits include complete control over creating any tests you want and not having to deal with a third-party program. The drawback is that it can be more challenging to convince people to conduct tests on a regular basis because they are more complex to set up and perform.
Graphical User Interface Testing
Formal GUI testing has become increasingly necessary as software and its graphical user interfaces become more complicated. Unit testing and functional testing are the two basic categories under which the testing process can be divided.
Each application component is carefully examined during unit testing, which is often driven by developers, to ensure that it is functioning properly when used alone. Contrarily, functional testing ascertains whether or not all of the application’s components can be used in the way that the end user anticipates. The quality assurance analysts who are better familiar with how users interact with the application typically carry out this stage of GUI testing.
Test Automation Framework
A framework is a collection of rules that aid in upholding test structure and consistency. Additionally, it aids in maintaining the code’s scalability, reusability, and maintainability across test cases.
The categories of frameworks used in automated testing are as follows:
● Data-Driven Framework – These frameworks concentrate on separating the test data and test case logic. The data, in this case, is handled as an input to the logic of the test script. Every collection of data can be thought of as a different test case. A data-driven test automation framework maintains keywords and element locators in an external file, such as an XML file. Since object repositories are unnecessary, it is simpler for testers to create test cases.
● Keyword-Driven – A data-driven framework that can only accept inputs from an Excel data source is known as a “keyword-driven framework.”
● Modular Testing Framework: A method for independently testing a piece of software is called the modular testing framework. A single line of code can test several modules because the same testing framework is used to test each module.
Conclusion
While lowering costs and raising accuracy, the adoption of automation testing has the potential to greatly increase software testing productivity. An AI-powered test automation tool called LambdaTest assists companies in improving the quality of their software, reducing the time it takes to market, and streamlining their testing processes. It is capable of handling all of your testing requirements and features a user-friendly interface, powerful capabilities, and a scalable design.